Sunday, November 24, 2013

"No wonder, then, that Pussy Riot make us all uneasy - you know very well
what you don't know, and you don't pretend to have any quick or easy
answers, but you are telling us that those in power don't know either.
Your message is that in Europe today the blind are leading the blind.
This is why it is so important that you persist. In the same way that
Hegel, after seeing Napoleon riding through Jena, wrote that it was as
if he saw the World Spirit riding on a horse, you are nothing less than
the critical awareness of us all, sitting in prison."

An extract from a letter written by philosopher Slavoj Zizek to imprisoned Pussy Riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, who agreed, replying: "We are a part of this force that has no final answers or absolute
truths, for our mission is to question. There are architects of
apollonian statics and there are (punk) singers of dynamics and
transformation. One is not better than the other."

Samples from the pair's extraordinary dialogue about Russian politics, authoritarianism, capitalism and more can be found here.